half-GOD
by faktory
Summary: Manifest, says the mirrorglass. You who know the hundredth name. Will you be Ours? – [Gamzee's introduction to the Cult of the Mirthful Messiahs, in pieces.]
1. heyokha boy

**notes: **so, this is my first homestuck fanfic, huh? what a surprise. dunno why i waited this long, i've been here lurking around the fandom for years, but it's all come to a head now. prepare yourselves for some really intensive mediocrity. and gamzee. prepare yourselves for gamzee.

...man oh man this kid never fails to kick my feelings in the balls.

**warnings:** violence &amp; gore, child neglect, drug abuse/addiction, cannibalism, unspecified but glaringly obvious mental health issues, etc.

* * *

"the ocean's calling out to you  
but you still can't swim  
you've walked into the water  
but you just fall down again

so they take you by hands  
by the hair  
and pull you back  
and they take you by the shoulders  
until everything goes black

and blue"

\- ari (courfiusette), _they were gifts from the sea_

* * *

**prologue/epilogue: heyokha boy**

* * *

Like all things wise and wicked, it begins with the sea.

That is to say…what's where it came from. What's where it found you, fed you, and put you up to motherfucking rest. And what's the name, the one you'd been calling since that first day to guide Them as They willed it, the first bright shards of _take_ cast as pickings for a lifetime's worth of _give_.

And that's how it was. And that's how it is.

You ain't once had no problem with these waters, no problem with where they lie or how they breathe. The brine's always been a home to you, no matter you'd just as easy be swallowed dead even on the threshold. Shit's about trust, about symbiosis and wonder, and a genesis that you will only understand sweeps down the line, murder deep in self-worship as well as any eager fool turned fleshpuppet could ever revel like a real boy.

But for now, you know nothing of using or being used, or of the killsharp danger of your kindness. So even when it takes from you your guardian and keeper, you don't have to be angry. So even when it spits predators your way, when you gotta take up arms against a brother or sister for all they don't take kind to landdwellers loitering at their gates, you don't have to be angry. You know the truth of curses and blessings, and how to seek the center of whatever's twisted in decay. Some worth is always there, in the first time you turned in desperation to those sickest greens to find they'd dim the cry of armies in mirage, or the first shoreline strife that left you with enough fresh fisher's meat bone-to-bone to last a week with surplus.

Always, always, the ocean has given you what you need. True enough, you don't _know_ what you need―ain't a single motherfucker out there who _knows_―but it's taken your falls and carried your beacon and you trust it, trust it like you ain't never trusted no invertebrother, before you. And now, and now, and now: what have you got to give in return?

You might not know how to breath underwater, but you'd just as soon drown trying.

* * *

**end notes: **stay tuned for more!


	2. three foolish monkeys

The Old Goat's been swept away again. Last you saw he was only white spark gobbled up by high tide, and you'd called and called but he ain't never listen, not to you. He ain't never listen to no one at all; your lusus has always gone with the knowing for his own self. You figure he's got big, important things calling for him out over the blue line down the water, and you've always kind of thought that one day, he would tell you his secrets.

For now, though, it only hurts. You ain't eaten a lick since he left you, not really―just that same bitter, viscous green that blurs the world and leaves you hungrier, hollower than before. But it's good, so good, and takes the edge off the spitting and the shaking and the phantoms of day that visit you only at your sharpest. It's always a wonder to shut your brain off from their twisted crooning, for all his absence has starved you too weak for the hunt or the kill.

But you keep your vigil proud as you do, wasting at the core while you mark at the sand with its nights. It's all cold, all bright, all true as any motherfuckin' truth can be for all that comes out of the deep ain't never lied to you yet. 'Til morning comes you sit and you ache with it, long laces of what's good from thorax through viscera, spilling out all the parts of you at once so you're dizzy with the lightness of it, with the sour cut and cross and stems of steel from your bones.

And so that's how you feel it.

It's only a murmur, at first; a thick rumble with too many edges to bleat from a lusus, from any beast at all. Twin moons in the sky, solid and blinding and _real,_ different as can be from the specters and shapes that whisper to your beat in sopor's absence. Their curves carve out a break in the wind, and you know it ain't make no sense but for what it misassembles itself into shards of meaning in your auricular tubing.

IT WAS BESPOKEN, THIS URN WITH ALL ITS FLESH,  
WHO'LL MURDER AND MARTYR AND OPEN TO US.

for it's we who speak on the nothing,  
infecting such a worthless wriggler  
to merit it our captive and our keeper.

And there's voices―two of 'em―but they ain't like none of the others. Hell, just their sound stirs in you an appetite for death in all its colors that stops you where you stand. Makes you want to put the pain into yourself and all that came before you, all that ever will, just to rip it from your dreams. But it's all soothsayings and no feeling; you should be scared, or hurt, or maybe even angry―what with the violence of your shaking―but you ain't none of that. You ain't anything; nothing at all.

YOU ARE BUT A half GOD YET,

(The noise of it looks you in the eyes.)

but when you MANIFEST our form  
you will be WHOLE.

You don't want this, you've never wanted this, none of these motherfucking ghosts that gather at your feet and tunnel in your ears and try to tell you that _you're gonna die, you're gonna fuck up, you're gonna rule the world. _And now the moons have started talkin' like they own you and it's all the same shit, it's all knots of thread and fire and filament slop, but it's never enough to fill you up. You're still empty as you've ever been, and sometimes you get so lonely in these hours it feels like you could up and float away.

_(half/GOD)_

Their echoes work you up 'til you're sobbing, shapes and colors losing their cohesion and falling apart from one another as you thrash around in desperation. When you try to stand, to _run,_ all the stars explode in unison and your body says it will not carry you. It's all you can do to crumple and fall back with the mess of your face pressed against the sky, sight cleaved between two moons, and wait―wait, like you always do―for strength to find you.

The appetite wanes. The hunger does not.


	3. seasized

Hours in and your pan still aches like a motherfucker, sick of backplaying those words with their music like whipping chords. You test your movement real careful-like, fingers and toes bending and flexing lethargically, wrists and ankles rolling against the grain. But it's just as soon as you manage to throw yourself upright that your sight tunnels yet again, and the thin train of time you've managed to get a grip on slips out of reach. Sitting there with your head resting uselessly between your knees, you're almost tempted to give up completely, to let the high tide—or whatever else—drag you under and swallow you up so you won't have to fight anymore. So you won't have to wait.

It's only when you feel the telling warmth of sunrise on your skin that your instinct kicks in to drive you forward, rolling you gracelessly onto your feet with a single heaving motion. The movement leaves you reeling, but it's not so bad this time that you can't manage to stagger over the shallow of the hillside. You always do. No matter if you're hurt or scared or seeing visions, you didn't survive the trials just to waste yourself along the shoreline.

The walk back to your hive is a brutal one for sure, but you can't afford to rest any longer. Even with the state you're in you know better than to push your luck actually dozing off so close to the edge of morning (and for all that talk of surrender you ain't really selfish enough to let go so soon). As for now, the killing light's already prickling on the water, giving all but good reason to head back into safer shade, sleep or no.

But sleep you do, as swift and sudden as you enter through the doorway. You don't even make it all the way to your 'coon, shaken as you are, stumbling as you do. The floor's as good a place as any to get your dreamcatching on, though, and it don't take more than a hollow minute 'fore something snatches you up. Luckily you've still got enough sopor in your veins to ward off the daymares, but what you find instead is bereaved of body or of mind; it's nothing of a dream at all, really, but hell if you don't feel like a trespasser on sacred grounds for not covering your head. You think that this place, with its gilded sky, could so easy strike a flame to your skin that better you take refuge in their shadow.

You watch your step, wary if this sea of lights is quick to anger as any other, but nothing ebbs. You might as well be a phantasm yourself, not yet awakened to the plane of dreaming dead—and besides, what's the waking world of dreamspace supposed to mean to a motherfucker like you? You don't even _know_ the things you know, it's all some other brothers spittin' pretty in your pan like you ain't got nothing on your own.

Whatever's wandering the hallowed halls behind these alleyways is out of your hands; their doors are locked to you. So you wander the periphery of things, where in your eyes there are slivers of cloud and a daybreak that strikes but forgets to burn. And sure as shit, it's from that break the voices of your night sky shine through, just when you thought you'd managed to outrun them somehow. Were they what brought you here? Is this the Real of things or just more twisted visions from your insides?

the wandering wriggler knows not yet what he sees,  
NOR DOES IT YET KNOW THE SAME OF HIM.

You're not sure which answer would be worse, so you don't ask for one.

What's more, their words are trying to get a grip on you again. You can feel it, the desperate curl of rage in your bones, the fearless power of your blood; sourceless, soundless, senseless. This isn't like the whisper of the the others, the slow burn at the edge of your aggravation sponge, smothered easy enough by a couple handfuls of slime. No, this presence fills your body wall-to-wall, so big as to push you the wayside just to make room for all the noise. It's even stronger in your head than it was down by the water—but isn't it _all _in your head, anyway?

(You're starting to have your doubts.)

By the time you think to search for the source of what calls you, their sounding's fucked you up so bad you can't be sure if you've been scaling towards the towers up above or the brilliance down below. That's what traps you in the end, pinned between half-victories, doomed as you ever were by a waiting game. Dreams are the resting place and stomping ground for your apparitions, they always have been. You never even had a chance.

his wake to be in glory is far from here and now.  
BUT WHAT OF WHEN HE FALLS FROM SLUMBER?

patience. rage is slow to sew and settle.  
in time, we must alight him with our seed and  
MAKE HIM TO SEE AS HE IS.

It's morning or night, wherever you are.

* * *

**end notes: **a headcanon of mine is that the death of a young troll (i.e. pre-conscription) outside of battle, regardless of circumstances (but especially in the case of suicide), is generally viewed by alternian society as shameful and self-centered specifically because it is a waste of the empire's resources to consume what has been provided and not live long enough to repay your debt through military service. After all, trolls are only allowed to live based on their usefulness as combatants, hence practices such as the brooding cavern trials and the culling of the disabled to ensure that said resources are only being spent on the "worthy" at all—and hence gamzee's referring to death as a selfish act.

also, if you haven't picked up on it yet, the concept of "oceanic feeling" is being mirrored pretty heavily in the storytelling here—i'm dreadfully weak to the suggestion of anything relating to the ocean (i wanted to be a pirate when i was little and i've never gotten over it, tbh) and the opportunity to use the intersection of outdated psychoanalysis and theology to make extended metaphors about to the sea was honestly just too good to pass up.


	4. meet your maker

**notes: **holy shit this isn't dead. surprise!

* * *

You have had _enough_ of waiting.

You're awake all at once with only this thought in mind, the light of your dreams pulsing heavy under your skin. Already buzzing with the first aches of withdrawal, you make quick work of the last of the pie in your fridge to wash your pan free of its own weight, first thing, and the thick of it clears your head for further wondering—wandering, maybe, in search of answers you kind of already know that you ain't gonna find.

This is one thing it seems you've gotta have, though, no matter your other losses. You think that nowadays the way you dig into the slime has become less about the hunger in your stomach and more about a hunger of other sorts, one you can't seem to put a name to. But if it can help to numb you from the waiting, maybe it can help you to survive the action, or the answers, all the same.

Because you can't subsist on being swallowed anymore. Your eyes are open to what surrounds you as you're being drunk up; you've been kept in the belly of the beast, and now's your chance to finally bear witness to its machinations. If only you could figure what that really meant, for even a moment. And then, and then, and then…

It's all too much. Something's gotta give.

Your body pulses with the memory of what you went and dreamt up—it freezes in the marrow of you, holding everything stock still as solid gold while the sky drifts further into darkness up above the window. No more waiting, you think again, and wonder on where you'll go from here.

That's when your husktop pipes up with a distinctive chime. It jarrs you well enough, and you head over to scope out the source.

The first thing you notice is—huh. No handle. No name.

The second thing you notice is that this no-name motherfucker already knows yours.

.

ｰｰ ? began trolling terminallyCapricious [TC] ｰｰ

Hello, Gamzee.

Lovely evening, isn't it?

TC: …

TC: wHo ThE mOtHeRfUcK aRe YoU?

My identity is of little importance at the moment. For now, think of me as but a humble messenger, or perhaps an advisor of sorts.

TC: OkAy ThAt'S bItChTiTs AnD aLl, BuT aLsO i HaVe No IdEa WhAt It MeAnS.

TC: hOw DiD yOu EvEn GeT tHiS hAnDlE, aNoNbRo?

I am something of an information broker.

Yours is only one of many contacts on my list.

But rest assured, my intentions hold no trace of malice. I would simply like to speak with you about what has occurred within the past couple of days.

TC: YeAh WeLl SoMe MoThErFuCkIn FrEaKy ShIt'S bEeN gOiNg DoWn FoR sUrE.

TC: yOu Up AnD gOt SoMe KnOwLeDgE oN aLl ThAt?

Certainly.

I understand your trepidation regarding your most recent experiences with certain, shall we say, unknown elements.

Of course, it is perfectly natural to be unnerved by such encounters.

TC: HoLd Up.

TC: aRe YoU sAyInG tHaT sTuFf WaS rEaL?

In a manner of speaking. Reality is not so clear-cut as you might think.

Consider yourself lucky. Some might call it providence, to hear the voices of the divine.

And yours is the sort of journey best suited to those who are guided, rather than those who act on their own.

TC: JoUrNeY?

TC: bUt I aIn'T gOiNg NoWhErE.

No, not for a while yet.

Nonetheless, it would be to your benefit to take me at my word, Gamzee. Trust me when I tell you that your visions are far more important than what little credence the state of dreaming may lend them.

TC: WhOa…

TC: yOu EvEn KnOw AbOuT mY dReAmS!

TC: ArE yOu MaGiC oR sOmEtHiNg?

Beyond knowing, one might say that I've a hand or two in them myself.

However, I have shown you only what you need to see. Anything more than that might be somewhat compromising to the stability of this timeline; you are no Seer, and such things are not meant for you.

But that's beside the point.

TC: tHe PoInT?

Yes, the point.

TC: I aIn'T sUrE iF i'M cAtChInG yOuR dRiFt No MoRe.

TC: sOrRy AnOnBrO. tHiS iS aLl A lItTlE cRaZy.

Allow me to rephrase myself, then.

I understand that you've been second-guessing yourself on this matter, and so I've chosen to contact you in order to affirm the veracity of your experiences. Keep in mind, the fact that your eyes have deceived you before does not necessarily mean that they're doing so now, as well.

TC: So WhAt Am I sUpPoSeD tO dO?

How interesting, that you should ask me for advice.

Hee hee.

TC: uHh.

TC: It Is?

Indeed.

Nevermind that. Just be sure to attend to any coming visions with due consideration. So long as you continue on the path laid out in front of you,  
everything else should fall into place―including, of course, your own understanding of the situation.

TC: aNd ThEn WhAt?

TC: I fEeL lIkE i'M sUpPoSeD tO bE dOiNg SoMeThInG.

Nothing more than that, yet. Don't concern yourself with it.

Oh, and it seems that you'll soon have far more pressing matters to attend to.

Very soon, in fact.

I'm afraid that this is where our conversation ends. I'll leave you to think things over, but you'll hear from me again when the time is right.

TC: wAiT

Good luck.

TC: WhAt?

ｰｰ ? ceased trolling terminallyCapricious [TC] ｰｰ

TC: sHiT.

.

You spend a good while just staring at the words, feeling vaguely like you've been granted a knowledge you shouldn't be in the knowing of—that same meaning you'd been swimming for, drowning for, chasing without ever really expecting to catch. It's weird, because you ain't like to think about this sort of thing much. All on your lonesome as you are, it's easy to let stuff slip away from you, for life to whittle down its purpose night by night until surviving 'til day is the only thing you've got left.

It scares you, a little. That cagey motherfucker told you that you're being spoken to, granted sights you ain't meant to be seeing, heard sounds you ain't meant to understand. And there's a _pull_ to those voices, like they've cast their tidal whispers up in your thinkpan all private-like, vivisected in the place where your pumpbiscuit sleeps.

_Yours is the sort of journey best suited to those who are guided._

Under any other circumstances you might wonder if someone was just messing with you for kicks, but something more about the whole mess gives you pause. You've got panache and a half from trying to decipher what your anonbro was putting out, but at the same time you'd been hard pressed to go idle or deny them anything less than your full attention, as being however it was commanded.

_…take me at my word, Gamzee._

Not more than a minute later, another message pops up on your screen. Not trollian, this time, but an official Imperial Missive. The kind they send out for breaking news, emergencies, special occasions, or the like. It freezes up all other function on your husktop until it's been opened and scrolled through, so it's not really something you could ignore even if you wanted to. Which you don't, because the info supplied up top says that it's addressed to you and you alone―not some planet-wide announcement like the usual. This here means business, whatever it is.

.

_《 Missive to be received by: [Gamzee Makara] 》_

_._

_._

_First and foremost, I would like to offer my congratulations on the auspicious occasion of your 4th wriggling day, which marks the halfway point between your victorious emergence from the brooding caverns and your eventual entrance into the adult world of the Alternian military. However, your coming of age will go even further than conscription; as the highest of all landdwelling castes, it is both your birthright and your sacred duty to be initiated into The Faith, that which is held by the power of our caste itself._

_._

Wait…today's your wriggling day?

The perigees had slipped through your claws; when you're on your lonesome and starving and stoned out of your mind the thousands of hours all congeal into a timelessness that sticks in the back of your throat. Mutes you, mutes the world, everything true and everything false dammed up where your body can't sense none of it. That's why it ain't uncommon for you to miss out on this sort of thing, and it's not like you've got much means for celebration in the first place, so you tend to pay it no mind. Still, it's pretty strange to have it broken through to you by something like this.

You keep reading.

.

_I reach out to you now with only my purest heart, as a disciple of the Cult of the Mirth__ful Messiahs; we bear the burden of a sicknasty wisdom in our veins and the marrow of this universe's double-death in our bones. We do not see as those around us see, and by schoolfeeding age you may have already begun to wonder on the ways of this world as those below you couldn't fathom. You may have asked for clarity, for silence, for the will decipher truth from illusion—asked: "What of this world is not my own?"_

_Here is your answer, and what all kindred of the purple caste shall come to know: that there are whole realities to keep as our own, lives where those whispers and specters have since awakened to Their works of hands, and They have come to claim the fruits of those greatest gifts that They have given. For your body is Their altar, your blood Their wicked elixer, your spirit Their sword. And in this, you shall come to know the self for which you keep your life._

_Namegivers, namespeakers, hear me now: your color flows for the nourishment of the holy Word. In these first nights, you will seek to carve, from out of the veil that frames all sight, your own window to the world. And in the sweeps to follow, you'll only see that window widen. So when the time comes for the truth of Their words to reach you, we trust that you will heed the call, and we will be waiting._

_._

_._

_《 High Priestess and Captain of Subjugglator Vessel #23 - Takhytir, "The Homilist" 》_

_._

You feel like you could just sit there, confused as you've ever been and shocked frozen all over again, but apparently this ain't finished just yet. Before you even get a chance to process what you've read, another pop-up appears on the screen, directing you over to an entirely different server―a connection so deeply encrypted that it takes all of five minutes to load up properly.

The page you end up on is mostly blank space, but there are a handful of words framed in the center; a hyperlink, if you ain't mistaken. It's big and bright as your own blood, and all it says is:

_WELCOME TO THE DARK CARNIVAL_

You look around the screen again, but other than that, there's nothing to be found. The block letters stare you down, draw you in, dare you to dig deeper. You read the line of text, over and over and over and over, and think that maybe this is everything you've been waiting for.

So you let it guide you, because what else can you do?

* * *

**end notes:** more on what the high priestess speaks of in her memo…well, i have a lot of xenoanthropological headcanons pertaining to how different hemospectrum-related dispositions manifest in different castes, and how this has (pre-?)historically played into the development of caste-specific subcultures, including religions. we already know that certain interests are regarded in this way, and seeing how those interests correlate with the characters' traits, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to posit that being drawn into these caste-specific subcultures hinges on an appeal to the nature of caste-specific traits—e.g. purpleblood chucklevoodoos (which i headcanon as being neurologically linked to psychosis and other mental health issues) and the cult.

i could go on, but it won't. maybe i should just invest in a zazzle t-shirt that reads "ask me about my headcanons" printed across the front. i'm actually sort of considering it.


End file.
